What is life expectancy and why it was chosen? Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, its current age and any other demographic factors including sex and geographic area.

The source of the data statistics.gov.uk

Why was this data selected?

Life expectancy over time for Dumfries & Galloway ## Trend - Scotland

Life expectancy over time for Scotland

The data set used for this was: Smoking - Scottish Survey Core Questions

The data was sourced from: https://statistics.gov.scot/resource?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fstatistics.gov.scot%2Fdata%2Fsmoking-sscq

Why it was chosen Originally, Mental Wellbeing was selected for the project but the data quantity was not enough for our purposes. We chose Smoking as two of the Scottish Government’s National Performance Framework (NPF) National Indicators are relevant to smoking. There is a strong Public Health focus on reducing the proportion of adults who smoke.

Overview The overview is generally optimistic. Whilst numbers are still higher than anyone would like, the long term trend shows a steady reduction in all age groups, especially the youngest age group of 16-35.

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Findings / key demographic for business to focus on

Overview There are huge variations around the country, whether they be measured by NHS Health Board or the more granular Local Authority areas. Poverty is one factor along with an urban/rural divide. Essentially the areas with the lowest proportion of smokers are more rural, and more affluent. The opposite is also true.

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Findings / key areas for business to focus on More work needs to be in less affluent areas, especially in the traditional industrial areas, to further reduce the rate of smoking.